THE
second important writer of Latin comedies presents a remarkable
contrast to the first. Terence (Publius Terentius Afer), probably
a native of Carthage, was a slave in the family of a Roman patrician.
On account of his witty conversation and graceful manners, he
became a favorite in the fashionable society of Rome and received
his freedom. His work, so far as we know it, consists of two
sorts: fairly close translations of Menander,
and contaminations. There are six extant plays, three of which,
The Brothers, The Girl of Andros, and The Eunuch,
are contaminations. Each is made from two Greek plays. Of the
remaining three, the Phormio is based on a play by the
Greek Apollodorus, and the others are from Menander. The Brothers
(Adelphi) was first performed in 160 B.C., at the funeral
games of Æmilius Paulus.

The weakness of Terence lies in his lack
of the bolder elements of action. His characters are somewhat
deficient in variety, and his situations are inferior to those
of Plautus. He is superior to
Plautus in refinement and taste, but never equal to him in exuberance
of spirits and in comic force. Comparatively speaking, Plautus
was the untutored genius, Terence the conscious artist; Plautus
the practical playwright, Terence the elegant literary craftsman.
Plautus wrote for the crowd, Terence for the aristocracy. Even
with the equivocal subjects of the new
comedy, Terence did not make vice attractive. As with Plautus,
when once the irregular situation is granted, the plays are found
to be full of moral sentiments and advice of a prudent and wise
nature.

STOCK FIGURES

From the time of Plautus and Terence it
is possible to trace in European drama the same characters, the
same plots, the same old themes of a stupid husband outwitted
by a young wife, the stingy father fleeced by his rascally sons,
or the aged sensualist defrauded of the pleasures he has handsomely
paid for. In Terence, however, the young people are somewhat
superior to the prototypes in Plautus. The courtesans are more
refined in speech and manner. The young men are not wholly libertines,
but approach more nearly to the type of lover which the modern
world enjoys in its fiction. The slaves are of a higher quality,
and their masters more decent, often treating them as trusted
domestics. The braggart soldiers are not quite such fools, but
more like witty roysterers, or half-philosophers.

POSITION OF TERENCE IN
THE MIDDLE AGES

Terence supplied the standard of classical
Latin for many centuries. He was studied and acted even during
those dark periods when all semblance of art seems to have died
out in Europe. In the tenth century the learned Hrosvitha,
a nun of Gandersheim, Germany, wrote, in imitation of Terence,
several plays which are still in existence. The prologues of
Terentian plays contain valuable criticism and statements of
dramatic principles. His sententious sayings have become the
general property of mankind: "Many men, many minds!"
"I consider nothing human alien to me," and "While
there's life there's hope." It is through Terence, more
than any one else, that the traditions of comedy can be traced
back to the New Comedy of the Greeks.

This article was originally
published in Minute History of the Drama. Alice B. Fort
& Herbert S. Kates. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1935.
pp. 84-6.